Wash the Scars Off
by Beckon
Summary: The water felt like it chewed at her skin, soaking into her clothes and making her feel heavier than she was, heavier than she should've been. And the knife, so light in its own right, felt like a weight now. A rock, tied tight around her waist, dragging her further down into the water. [for TasmanianDevil]


**A/N: So this one goes out to TasmanianDevil, who made the request like seven months ago, and I'm only just now finishing it. Hopefully you enjoy it! If not, just let me know! (I'm a little rusty with TEW).**

 **Truth be told, I actually had three of these story types kind of written out, and working on this one has definitely encouraged me to finish the other two. I forgot how fun it was to work on a short little series about Haunted!partners killing each other. (So expect a Joseph version coming soon, and then a secret one as well)!**

 **I am curious though, what kind of content would people like to see more from TEW stories? Like more romance, or horror? Or brutal stuff like this with them killing each other? Endless possibilities.**

* * *

Her body was desperate to move, desperate to keep fighting.

Every voice inside of her head was screaming, _pleading_ for her to run- to do something!

And Kidman wanted the same. She wanted nothing more than to kick into her instincts and get out of here, even if it meant running back into the arms of the Administrator. Born in dirt, and bred with bloodied fingers, it was a miracle she had survived for so long with only instincts, and a naturally leaning habit of choosing fight over flight; a habit that had left her with more than her fair share of bruised knuckles and broken noses.

She knew how to keep herself alive.

It was the one thing life had given to her- free of charge.

But there was a pain, hot and burning in her lower back, sourced from the knife that was firmly embedded in skin and muscle. Every hard breath that shook from stone lungs brought attention to the hilt pressed hard against her skin; the entirety of its blade resting in the compounds of her spine and nerves. Twisted and angled in a way that any sort of movement was agonizing to make.

Twisted and angled in a way that made her legs go numb.

Paralyzed maybe.

It had burned her from the inside when she had first been struck, when she had first been downed- a powerful ambush from the shadows. The drag wounds on her arms, the bloodied cuts on her hands reminded her of being slung across concrete, of being tossed into the shallow pool without humanistic regard.

She had been hot before- cultivating a burning fire inside of her.

But it was cold now.

The shallow pool had been empty when she first went in, hard on her arms and knees in a false attempt to catch herself. But it didn't take long before the water began to fill in- quiet and cold; the source of its appearance not visible, so it appeared to simply pour out of the concrete pores themselves. She couldn't remember the specifics of how she got here, or where the hell this place was to begin with. It looked and felt like the basement to somewhere- the hotel maybe? That was the last memory she could grasp at; most of them had slipped out through her fingers, and were too far away for her to grab at now.

The duel jagged, metal boxes in the far corner looked like they should've been a clue, that they should've been able to tell her something... but they didn't.

She drew nothing from it.

It was cold; the water practically freezing as it steadily rose up underneath her- threatening to engulf and drown her if she didn't move, if she didn't drag herself out now. But her body, so used to fighting and living, was hardly able to move now. No amount of determination, motivation, or even fear could get her jagged, locked limbs to push forward.

She was still burning up, but it was so damn _cold_.

The water felt like it chewed at her skin, soaking into her clothes and making her feel heavier than she was, heavier than she should've been. And the knife, so light in its own right, felt like a weight now. A rock, tied tight around her waist, dragging her further down into the water.

(It reminded her of home, of the village- of the pierced screams of those thrown below the altar. Rocks tied around them as well, just before the beast devoured them).

(Would the beast devour her too)?

Bloodied fingers clawed at the ground underneath her, fighting against the cold that throbbed and ate at her broken joints.

When the water reached her back, when it finally hit the knife, there was a second of relief to the burning- a momentary blanket of cold to ease and numb tortured nerves. Cold was supposed to slow the bleeding down, and yet it was hard to ignore the fresh pool of red that poured out around her.

Like a baptism made of communal wine.

A baptism made of sacrificial blood, like a lamb to the slaughter.

It pooled; it spread, and spilled out all around her.

She was always used to the sight of blood, human or animal- even her own from time to time, whether it was from a split lip, or a badly broken nose.

But this... this was new.

It was nauseating, and it twisted an entirely different knife into her gut.

"You were always the quiet one, Kid."

Kidman gritted her teeth and bit back a shiver at the voice- bit back a chill as she caught his movements in the corner of her eye. He had been pacing the rim of the shallow pool again and again, watching and waiting as the water devoured her little by little. His steps, always heavy on the heel and rolling, sounded loud against the concrete walls- against the silence all around them.

Eyes barely lifted as he stepped into her line of sight once more, and finally stopped his irritated pacing- giving her yet another unfortunate look at him.

Sebastian was blood-stained and battered, and looked like every bit of Hell as she did. It was impossible to ignore the way it looked as though he had fought every inch of skin and every drop of blood against turning into one of those creatures, turning into a Haunted. The jagged cuts on his face were a testament to him trying to dig the voices out of his head, to shut them up and make the pulsating ringing stop.

It had all been a losing battle for him though.

All of that struggle, all of that pain, self-inflicted and all, had all been for nothing; it had been useless.

There had never been another choice, another option for him.

Everything had been rigged from the start.

Still, it was difficult to come to terms with how such a man like him, stronger in body than in mind, could be reduced to this. Could be reduced to a simple puppet in the grand scheme of STEM- strung up cords, and jagged motions.

But Kidman knew why.

And she would be stupid to think she could look past it- that she could pretend otherwise.

Because just behind him, mirroring every single footstep, was Ruvik. He was casted behind Sebastian like a white shadow, a ghost image; a mere flicker of a backdrop in every single one of the man's movements.

Whenever his lips moved, so did Sebastian's- like a puppet master holding the strings.

That was the key here, that's what gave it all away.

Kidman knew that this body, that this image in front of her wasn't Sebastian, so the words coming out of him weren't his either. Just like with Joseph, just like how it was back in the infirmary; that wasn't him, that wasn't her partner. So neither was this. This wasn't like it was before, back in the city, when Sebastian was changing in front of her that first time- skin bloodied and ripping as STEM tore through him the only way it could.

He had fought back then too- physically restraining himself from turning on her, from hurting her.

And he had spoken the one word she had known all her life; the one word that meant anything to her.

 _Run_.

Kidman had to remind herself not to believe in any of this- not to listen, or even try to understand a single word coming out of him.

Just like with Joseph- she had to preserve his memory, preserve who he really was.

And this _wasn't_ him.

"You were always hiding something behind that quiet act of yours."

She bit back a groan as she forced her arms to continue supporting herself- forcing them to exert strength she didn't exactly have. She could barely hold her upper body above the water on shaking palms, causing her torso to dip further down than she would've liked. It was so damn cold, she could feel her blood freezing inside of her. "You played the same game," Kidman replied, biting through chattering teeth as she watched him still watching her. She knew that Ruvik knew that she could see him, but she was biding her time here. "If anything, you were worse."

"Talking behind someone's back doesn't count," Sebastian retorted, before he carefully stepped down into the shallow pool with her; Ruvik remained where he was. "But seeing as we're both at the end of our lines... Let's talk."

He was consciously aware that this is the end, then?

He knew that there was no turning back from being Haunted...

She gritted teeth and watched as the water rippled around him with every movement, with every step- causing it to ripple back towards her. It created small waves in the pool of blood around her, causing the red spill to spread further out across the water now. "I have nothing to say to you."

Talking, let alone arguing, wasn't going to get her anywhere with him.

But she had never been one to keep quiet.

Sebastian stopped slightly at the words. "Nothing?" he repeated, as though the single word sounded foreign to him. "Nothing at all?"

Kidman knew that something was coming now. She knew that there had to be a reason here for him to react like that- knew that he was stringing her along. And it was then she knew that Ruvik was stepping in, and she braced herself for whatever might come next.

"Nothing about Mobius, or their involvement with Beacon? Or with the KCPD for that fact?" the Detective pressed.

And the words sounded so odd coming from him- no, not him, not the _real_ Sebastian. Still, the illusion was mostly sold as she felt her stomach twist at the question. It rolled itself back on her, making her remember, making her come to terms that yes, this whole thing was a set-up. Her sudden appearance at the KCPD when they were suddenly in need of another Detective. Her record was good, not perfect, but good even though no one at the local training agencies had even heard of her. There were no results if someone were to look her name up in a database; it was almost like she had appeared out of thin air.

Like she herself hadn't existed until then.

And sometimes she truly felt that way.

"Or _Myra_ even?"

Kidman flinched at the mention of the woman's name.

She remembered reading about it in files- even hearing it once or twice in passing. She knew who the woman was; the pieces of her just didn't connect until here, until STEM, when she saw everything about who Myra was, everything about what Mobius was, unravel before her.

"You don't know any of that..." Kidman bit, physically shuddering as the water rose complete over the knife now- submerging it.

"Did you really think that you could just walk in, Kid? Just walk in, and take her place like you weren't the one behind it all?" Sebastian continued, stopping just a few feet from her now. "Thought you could record everything and send it back to Mobius without leaving behind a paper trail?"

She didn't.

Her record was clean.

Mobius had the money and power to get rid of anything- she of all people would know.

(They had enough power to get rid of free will, after all).

Sebastian didn't know about Mobius.

But Ruvik did.

"What are you getting out of this, Ruvik?" Kidman pressed, choosing to ignore the Detective for the time being. "You think this can just be another one of your mind tricks that you've been playing with this entire time?"

"This is between you and the Detective, Kid," he replied, low and rolling the words off of his tongue. "I'm simply giving him the means to talk freely. He's too much of a soft-heart to do anything to you on his own; he thinks you still have potential, that you can still be saved- redeemed even. And how foolish that truly makes him. A man who has seen the plenty of the bad in people can't convince himself to see the same in you. He can't seem to understand that... when this is over, Mobius will kill him. _You_ will kill him."

"That's not-" but the words killed themselves in her throat.

Because she knew the truth in them- she had seen the reports plenty of times over. No one survived STEM, mostly due to machine, but if this worked, if STEM was purged... Mobius wouldn't risk the truth of their operations to get out. If Sebastian lived, if he saw this nightmare to the end, Mobius wouldn't let him just walk away. There would be too much at stake; they didn't leave behind loose ends, and paper trails.

They would do to him what they had done to the others.

What they might even do to her.

"You've gone quiet again, Kid."

Kidman hated the sound of Sebastian's voice- rough and jagged, yet still holding an underlining tone that she recognized so well. Even if it wasn't him, it sounded like him, and that was painful enough on its own. She could hear the water breaking as the Detective continued towards her once more, closing the space until he was looming over her; his shadow long and dark, an eclipse against the dim lighting.

And how the tables have turned on her.

When she was in the water tank, with the threat of drowning circling around her neck, Sebastian had been there fighting to get her out. He had been there in the aftermath, hands nervously, and awkwardly clinging to her shoulders; hands so used to holding a shotgun that they didn't know how to hold her instead. He had offered his vest to cover her shirt, all while confessing that there were better ways to die- that no one should die like that.

He had seen too many cases, had seen too many scenes and evidence to know how drowning really worked- to know how painful and demeaning it was.

Too many similarities between suffocation and drowning.

It all invoked the same kind of nightmares; to him, it was all the same in the end.

You're made powerless no matter how hard you fight.

You can't breath.

And no matter how hard you try, you die.

In one, it's smoke circling in the lungs, and in the other, it's water.

But now here she was with the water up to her chest, and rising steadily higher still- and it wouldn't be long before it was circling her neck all over again. And instead of rescuing her again, he was meant to be the rock that would hold her under this time.

A hand reached down and Kidman felt fingers wrap themselves around the knife hilt, before Sebastian ripped it out just as easily as he had stabbed it in. The heat burned through her again and she had to bite back the scream that cultivated in her chest- letting it wheeze out through clenched teeth. Her body shook at what could've once been relief at the removal, only to collapse in on itself.

Sebastian caught her just before she went under though- rolling her onto her back and holding her still as he knelt down into the water next to her.

It reminded her of the village, of the baptism in the rivers- of sins washed away in the blood of the beast.

The pool was entirely red now, but Kidman was almost certain that it wasn't just her blood anymore.

(It could've been though).

He wrapped his hand around her throat, fitting it perfectly in the curve of his palm as it settled heavy against her. She held her breath at the hold, expecting him to shove and pin her down- expecting him to hold her head underneath the water until she stopped moving.

But he didn't- not immediately at least.

Instead, he held onto her, staring down at her with white, bloodied eyes.

Kidman tried to ignore it, tried not to notice that there was something more behind them- a struggle, a fight to resist still. Haunted, but not completely dead on the inside; there was still a piece of him in there, a piece of him trying to get out, to stop this.

"Any last words, Kid?"

She took a shuddered breath, feeling it cold and bitter in her throat.

"Fuck you."


End file.
